Like all Christian apologists, Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard boast that Jesus Christ is not merely a creature of the New Testament but is also well attested by non-Christian historians of the period.
The Roman historians Pliny the Younger, Cornelius Tacitus, and Suetonius all mention Jesus in their writings. The secular Greek-speaking historians Thallus and Phlegon, the satirist Lucian of Samosata, and the eminent Jewish historian Flavius Josephus also mention Jesus. (p. 262)
But these mentions of Jesus are of no help in authenticating the historical existence of Jesus. You might as well point out that there are entries on Jesus in modern encyclopedias, too, but this proves nothing either. The constant appeal to these scant passages reveals something very significant about the whole approach of apologists. They cite these ancient snippets like fundamentalists citing scriptural proof-texts, without any attempt to scrutinize the worth of the sources they cite. I propose to exercise such scrutiny here. And, to get ahead of the game, we will find that even if these passages are all authentic products of the individuals to whom they are ascribed, none would be of any help because they are simply too late. Sure, they are closer to the events (if there were any events) than we are, but that is not close enough.
Or, perhaps to put it more accurately, they are not as far away from the events as we are. But you know the saying: “A miss is as good as a mile.” What we would need from someone like Josephus or Tacitus is front-line reporting. And they are all too late for that. These writers are valued as ostensibly objective sources of information since their authors cannot be suspected of Christian bias. But that also means that, as outsiders, they must have been dependent upon reports of what Christians were preaching and teaching in their day. It would be altogether different if any of these writers had quoted some letter from the first third of the first century CE, in which, say, some traveler chanced to write home to his wife and mentioned having heard the famous Nazarene Jesus preach or having seen him cast out a demon. But this is what none of them do. As of now, we possess no such testimony. Who knows? Maybe someday some archaeologist will discover such evidence, and that would shake things up pretty well. But for now, we don't have anything.
FLAVE-A-FLAVIUS
But we do have Josephus. In our copies of Josephus (penned many centuries after he composed his histories) we find a famous and much-disputed passage called the Testimonium Flavianum.
Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was the Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct to this day. (Antiquities of the Jews 18.3.3)
Josephus was, of course, no Christian, but a Jew who sucked up to the Romans after abandoning his position as a leader of Jewish forces in the war with Rome. He not only predicted that the general Vespasian would ascend to the Imperial throne, he pretty much ordained him as the Messiah of Israel. Is it likely he would have written this passage, awarding the crown to a rival Messiah, Jesus? And if he had, wouldn't that mean Josephus was a Christian? But he wasn't. There is simply no way he could have written this passage. And he didn't. Origen of Alexandria in the mid-third century, had a much earlier copy of Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews than any that survives to our day, and Origen commented that Josephus “did not accept Jesus as Christ” (Commentary on Matthew 10.17). So it is plain that in his day the text did not contain our Josephus text about Jesus. Some have suggested, however, that Origen must have read something about Jesus in Josephus, perhaps omitted from our copies. Josephus must have made some negative comment about Jesus, right? Sure, he might have, for all we know, but remember, Josephus had proclaimed the Gentile Vespasian as the Christ. Seems to me that's all Origen would have to know to say that Josephus hadn't considered Jesus for the job.
Shlomo Pines1 pointed out that there is another version of this passage, in Arabic, found in Agapius’ Book of the Title by a tenth-century Melkite bishop of Hierapolis. It is a bit shorter.
Similarly Josephus, the Hebrew. For he says in the treatises that he has written on the governance (?) of the Jews: “At this time there was a wise man who was called Jesus. His conduct was good, and (he) was known to be virtuous. And many people from the Jews and other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to be crucified and die. But those who had become his disciples did not abandon his discipleship. They reported that he had appeared to them three days after the crucifixion, and that he was alive; accordingly he was perhaps the Messiah, concerning whom the prophets have recounted wonders.”
Apologists like to claim this shorter version as an excuse to theorize that Josephus had written some version of the famous text, but without those elements that would make him look like a Christian.2 Perhaps the Arabic version, they argue, represents something closer to what Josephus originally wrote. Nice try. It doesn't sufficiently mitigate the main difficulty. Even if Josephus wrote “only” that Jesus might have been the Messiah, this would be dangerous, implying that maybe he had been a little hasty in giving the honor to Vespasian. Besides, Agapius’ version is not an earlier version of the Testimonium Flavianum but a later one, just an abridgment of the longer, familiar version. Notice that the conclusion refers to wonders predicted for the Messiah; mustn't that imply some earlier reference to Jesus doing miracles? There is such a reference in the familiar Greek version, but not in this one.
Many of us think the entire passage is a fabrication by the fourth-century Church historian Eusebius. He is the first to “quote” it. It beggars credulity to think that, if the text were actually original to Josephus, no Christian until Eusebius should ever have mentioned it.
A closely related approach is to say, Agapius or no Agapius, that Josephus might have written a less Christian-sounding version, and that, instead of creating the Testimonium out of whole cloth, later Christian scribes might have just added a few Christian elements, like Jesus being the Christ. I'm afraid that's not going to fly, either, and for one simple reason: even the hypothetical version proposed by apologists still contains the final note that “the tribe of Christians, named from him, is not extinct to this day.” But if the apologists are right, there has been no reference to Jesus as “the Christ,” so how could Josephus have said the “Christians” were named for not “Christ” but “Jesus”?
There is a hilarious irony here. Apologists cannot abide the occasional suggestion of critics that this or that passage in the New Testament might have been an interpolation dating from that tunnel period between the original writing and our first extant copies. How convenient! You cannot allow that a passage might have crept into the text if you can't produce any manuscripts that lack it—even though we have no manuscripts at all, one way or another, from the relevant period.3 But when it comes to Josephus, hey, anything goes! If the Testimonium as it stands cannot be authentic, then let's pretend it doesn't, er, didn't contain the problem portions. They would really prefer to claim the whole juicy Jesus passage as is, for apologetics. But no one will fall for that.
THE CART BEFORE THE HORSE
Then again, the whole matter looks rather different once we consider the possibility that the gospels are later than Josephus and cobbled major portions of the Jesus story together from Josephus. We have already seen how striking parallels with Josephus’ Moses nativity suggest that Matthew appropriated it as the template for Jesus’ birth story. There is even more reason to believe that the Markan Passion narrative is based on Josephus’ account of the interrogation and flogging of the Jerusalem prophet Jesus ben-Ananias.4 And this is very significant, for it means the most important portion of the very first gospel's Jesus story is derived not from something like the Testimonium Flavianum but from a passage about a different Jesus. In short, it is nonsense to suggest that Josephus referred to the Christian Jesus if that very character was a subsequent creation partly based on Josephus’ tales of Jesus ben-Ananias, Simon bar-Giora, and so on.
ANOTHER JOSEPH
Much speculation surrounds the figure of Joseph of Arimathea. Of course, the traditional view is that this Joseph was a historical figure. Subsequent to the gospels, legend made him Jesus’ uncle. The risen Jesus appeared to him in the prison cell where Joseph had been cast because of his association with the crucified criminal Jesus. He gave his uncle the chalice he had used at the Last Supper and told him to take it to Europe. Eventually, Joseph reached Brittany (which he never would have done if he'd had any idea what writers like Dan Brown would make of his visit there!) and then crossed the channel to deposit the relic at Glastonbury, where he died, leaving behind a souvenir shop for tourists.
Dennis R. MacDonald makes him a legend on the other end of his biography, too.5 MacDonald thinks Joseph of Arimathea began as a Christianization of the Homeric character King Priam. Just as Priam dared to visit the camp of his enemies to beg for the return of the corpse of his son, Hector, from the Greek Achilles, who had slain him, so did his Christian counterpart Joseph entreat Pontius Pilate to let him take charge of Jesus for proper burial. The theory is quite plausible. But there is another good one to consider.
Suppose Joseph of Arimathea turned out to be a fictionalized version of Josephus the historian? His Romanized name was Flavius Josephus because of his association with the Flavian dynasty, but his Hebrew name was Joseph bar-Matthias. Does that have a familiar ring? Hmm: “Joseph bar-Matthias”? “Joseph of Arimathea”? Suspiciously close, you might say. But maybe that's just a curiosity, no more than a coincidence? Could be. But consider this passage from Josephus’ autobiography, depicting a scene near the end of the Jewish War, when Josephus was palling around with his new friend, Titus, the Roman commander.
I saw many captives crucified, and remembered three of them as my former acquaintances. I was very sorry at this in my mind, and went with tears in my eyes to Titus, and told him of them; so he immediately commanded them to be taken down, and to have the greatest care taken of them, in order to their recovery; yet two of them died under the physician's hands, while the third recovered.6
This may be the origin of the gospel episode in which Joseph asks a Roman official for the body of one of three crucified men, leaving the others to chance. We usually don't think to ask why he didn't seek a decent burial for all three men, only for Jesus. Remember, Mark gives no hint that Joseph had any allegiance to Jesus to make him want to see to his burial. He was, for all we are told, simply a pious man engaged in an act of charity: burying crucified criminals since no one else would. So why only Jesus? But it does make sense as a rewrite of this episode from the life of Joseph bar-Matthias. Josephus did obtain the release of all three crucifixion victims, still alive at the time, but, just as in Mark, Jesus was the only one to return to life, so in the Life of Josephus, only one of the three, once taken down, survives. It makes a lot of sense. And obviously, if we accept this explanation, we have even more reason to think that Josephus was prior to the gospels and served as a source for them.
NEXT OF KIN
There is a second passage in Josephus’ Antiquities (20:9:1) in which he describes the death of a certain James, saintly brother of a certain Jesus, considered the Anointed. Apologists insist that, even if you are mean enough to take the Testimonium Flavianum from them, this one, by the skin of its teeth, still is enough to allow them to say, as O’Reilly and Dugard do, that Jesus is a historically attested figure. But is it?
And now Caesar, upon hearing of the death of Festus, sent Albinus into Judea, as procurator. But the king deprived Joseph of the high priesthood, and bestowed the succession to that dignity on the son of Ananus, who was also himself called Ananus. Now the report goes that this eldest Ananus proved a most fortunate man; for he had five sons who had all performed the office of a high priest to God, and who had himself enjoyed that dignity a long time formerly, which had never happened to any other of our high priests. But this younger Ananus, who, as we have told you already, took the high priesthood, was a bold man in his temper, and very insolent; he was also of the sect of the Sadducees, who are very rigid in judging offenders, above all the rest of the Jews, as we have already observed; when, therefore, Ananus was of this disposition, he thought he had now a proper opportunity [to exercise his authority]. Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he assembled the Sanhedrin of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others [or, some of his companions]; and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned: but as for those who seemed the most equitable of the citizens, and such as were the most uneasy at the breach of the laws, they disliked what was done; they also sent to the king [Agrippa], desiring him to send to Ananus that he should act so no more, for that what he had already done was not to be justified; nay, some of them went also to meet Albinus, as he was upon his journey from Alexandria, and informed him that it was not lawful for Ananus to assemble a Sanhedrin without his consent. Whereupon Albinus complied with what they said, and wrote in anger to Ananus, and threatened that he would bring him to punishment for what he had done; on which king Agrippa took the high priesthood from him, when he had ruled but three months, and made Jesus, the son of Damneus, high priest.
But it is quite likely that Josephus intended no reference to James the Just, the “brother of the Lord” or to the Christian Jesus. It makes a lot more sense if the ambushed James was supposed to be James, son of Damneus, the brother of Jesus, son of Damneus. These men do figure in the immediate context. The story is that Ananus arranged to have a rival for the priesthood eliminated on trumped-up charges but did not get away with it. Once his shenanigans became known, he was booted from his position, and the brother of the murdered James was awarded the office Ananus had sought to usurp. So the slain James was avenged at least insofar as his surviving brother, Jesus, received the office James would have had. The reference we now read to “Jesus called Christ” might originally have read (or denoted) “Jesus, called/considered high priest.” In both Daniel 9:26 and in the Dead Sea Scrolls, “an anointed one” means “a high priest.” Nothing about Jesus Christ and James the Just after all.
BAPTIST PREACHER
Josephus discusses John the Baptist as a figure of the recent past. But the passage (Antiquities 18.5.2) looks a bit suspicious. First, the writer seems surprisingly eager to rebut a sacramental interpretation of John's baptism: he
commanded the Jews to exercise virtue, both as to righteousness toward one another, and piety towards God, and so to come to baptism; for that the washing would be acceptable to him, if they made use of it, not in order to the remission of some sins, but for the purification of the body; supposing still that the soul was thoroughly purified beforehand by righteousness.
Why would Josephus care about such niceties any more than Gallio did (Acts 18:14–15)? It sounds like sectarian theological hair-splitting that would fit more naturally among John the Baptist sectarians or early Christians. Maybe these latter-day Baptists had started to debate the nature of baptism and came to rationalize it, just like modern Christian Baptists do. They decided that baptism is not in and of itself a salvific act. It should not be viewed as some sort of magic but instead denotes a change of mind and heart that is what really saves. Or it may have been an interpolation into Josephus by someone trying to correct Mark, interpreting what he said about a “baptism for the forgiveness of sins” in a non-sacramental sense.
Another reason for regarding the passage as an interpolation is the presence of a redactional seam, a clue that a copyist has stitched in new material. Often you can tell this from similar opening and closing sentences. The copyist had to reproduce the peg from which the continuation of the original narrative depended. The passage just quoted begins with “Now, some of the Jews thought that the destruction of Herod's army came from God, and that very justly as a punishment of what he did against John.” This looks like the interpolator's paraphrase of the closing words of the passage: “Now, the Jews had an opinion that the destruction of this army was sent as a punishment upon Herod, as a mark of God's displeasure against him.” This last would have been the original, speaking of Herod's general impiety, while the other would have been the paraphrase that introduces John the Baptist by name, blaming Antipas’ defeat on the Tetrarch's ill-treatment of John. So perhaps Josephus did not mention John after all.
ACTS OF JOSEPHUS
Our concern in this book is the gospels, not Acts, but it is worth looking at a few instances where Acts, too, seems to have used Josephus as a source, the point being to show that Josephus is not some independent corroboration of the New Testament but is rather the basis for some of it. We are used to the idea that we can no longer appeal to Matthew and Mark as independent sources of information about Jesus, their frequent agreements as “multiple attestations” of the same facts. Why not? Because Matthew is based on Mark. And so it is with the New Testament and Josephus.
Josephus discusses three of the numerous anti-Roman hooligans, prophets, and would-be Messiahs active in the decades preceding the war with Rome. He gives special attention to Theudas the Magician, an unnamed Egyptian, and Judas of Galilee. Acts mentions just these three as well, and it looks like he was working from Josephus, though, not having a copy at hand to double-check, he made a goof or two. For instance, Josephus mentions Theudas, active in the 40s CE, and then, in a flashback, he refers to Judas of Galilee, who led the revolt against the Roman taxation census of 6 CE. In Acts 5:36–37, Luke has Gamaliel give a brief history lesson:
Before these days, Theudas arose, making himself out to be somebody, and a number of men, about four hundred, joined him. But he was slain, and all who followed him were dispersed and came to nothing. After him, Judas the Galilean arose in the days of the census and drew away some of the people after him; he also perished, and all who followed him were scattered.
Oops! Theudas’ exploits were yet in the future when this scene was transpiring. He did not precede Judas, as Luke would have it, but came on the scene decades later. That's quite a goof! What happened? The answer is simple: Luke vaguely recalled the order in which Josephus had discussed the two rebels and assumed this was the historical order in which they had appeared. An innocent mistake.
Luke also mentions Josephus’ Egyptian: “Are you not the Egyptian, then, who recently stirred up a revolt and led the four thousand men of the Assassins [sicarii] out into the wilderness?” (Acts 21:38). In one account (Antiquities 20.171) Josephus numbers the Egyptian's troops at four hundred, while in another (Wars of the Jews 2.261–263) he gives a figure of some thirty thousand. Luke may have confused the two, giving the Egyptian four thousand. Do you suppose it is merely a coincidence that Acts mentions the same three, and only the same three troublemakers, when there were plenty more active in the period to choose from?
If Luke did not know Josephus, we are faced with an astonishing number of coincidences: he links Judas and the census as a watershed event, connects Judas and Theudas, connects the Egyptian with the sicarii, connects the Egyptian with the desert, and selects these three figures out of all the anonymous guerillas and impostors of the period.7
Robert Eisenman discerns yet other places where Acts seems to depend upon Josephus.8 The visit of Simon Peter to the Roman officer Cornelius at Caesarea (Acts 10–11) looks like a parody of Josephus’ story of one Simon, a pious synagogue leader in Jerusalem.9 This man wanted Herod Agrippa I barred from Temple worship because of his alleged unclean Gentile ways. But Agrippa invited him to inspect his Caesarea home, where he found nothing amiss, and then Agrippa sent him away laden with presents. In Luke's hands, Josephus’ Agrippa becomes the Gentile Cornelius. Luke borrowed the name Cornelius from elsewhere in Josephus, where Cornelius is the name of two different Roman soldiers. And Luke keeps the location of the story at Caesarea. Luke also retains the theme of conflict between Herod Agrippa I and Simon (now Simon Peter) but transfers it to Acts 12.
Luke's fascinating character Simon Magus (Acts 8:9–10) seems to be identical with a magician named Simon whom Josephus says helped Bernice convince her sister Drusilla to cast aside her husband, King Azizus of Emesa. Azizus had gotten circumcised to marry her, but now she proceeded to take up with the uncircumcised Felix instead. Acts mentions several of these people, including Bernice (Acts 25:13), Felix and Drusilla (Acts 24:24), and Simon.
Where did Luke get the idea for the Agabus prophecy of a severe famine to transpire in Claudius’ reign (Acts 11:27–28), of Paul's mission from Antioch to bring famine relief to Jerusalem (Acts 11:29–30), and for the previous episode of Philip and the Ethiopian treasurer (Acts 8:26–40)? Again, very likely from Josephus. It all stems from Josephus’ story of Helena, Queen of Adiabene. This was a realm adjacent to (or overlapping with) Edessa. Helena and her son, Prince Izates, converted to Judaism, though initially the prince refused circumcision on the advice of a Jewish teacher who reassured him that spiritual worship was more important than getting circumcised. The queen agreed, pointing out that Izates’ subjects might take offense if he accepted such alien customs. But before long, a stricter teacher from Jerusalem, named Eliezer, came to visit Prince Izates, only to find him pondering over Genesis 17:9–14, in which God institutes the Abrahamic covenant of circumcision. Eliezer asked if Izates understood the implications of what he read. Then why did he not see how important it was to be circumcised? The prince agreed and got circumcised. Helena and Izates, enthusiastic converts to the faith of Israel, resolved to dispatch agents to Egypt and Cyrene to buy grain during the Claudius famine and to distribute it among the poor in Jerusalem.
These events appear in Acts as follows. Eisenman identifies Paul as the first Jewish teacher who tells Izates he does not need to receive circumcision if he has faith. Paul must be one of Helena's agents bringing famine relief to Jerusalem, which he is said to do “from Antioch” (that is, Edessa, one of several cities called Antioch) in Acts 11.10
We rejoin Helena's story back in chapter 8, with Philip taking the role of Eliezer. He accosts the financial officer of a foreign queen. He is returning home from worshipping in Jerusalem, through Egypt by way of Gaza. This is of course the Ethiopian eunuch. Luke has transformed Queen Helena of Adiabene into Candace the queen of Ethiopia. Reverting to an Old Testament prototype, Luke makes Helena, a convert to Judaism, into a New Testament version of the Queen of Sheba, who journeyed to Jerusalem to hear the wisdom of Solomon. In fact, there weren't any Ethiopian queens at this time. So the queen in question must have been a fictional version of another, Helena of Adiabene.11
When Philip asks the Ethiopian if he understands what he is reading, Luke has borrowed it from the story of Izates and Eliezer. In both, the question “Do you understand what you are reading?” leads to a ritual conversion. In Acts, the text is Isaiah 53, and the ritual is baptism. In Josephus, the text is Genesis 17, and the ritual is circumcision. The circumcision element survives (as a crude parody recalling Galatians 5:12) in the Ethiopian having been fully castrated. Even the location of the Acts episode comes from the Helena story, as the Ethiopian is traveling into Egypt via Gaza, as Helena's agents must have done in order to buy the grain. Luke's version cannot have been the original for the simple reason that a eunuch could not have gone to Jerusalem to worship since eunuchs were barred from the Temple.
TACIT AGREEMENT
Cornelius Tacitus (Annals 15:44), writing about 125 CE, asserts that Nero blamed the Roman Christians for torching the city. He was scapegoating them in order to divert suspicion from himself. In case his readers were unacquainted with Christianity, Tacitus explains they were a sect founded by one “Christus” or “Chrestus” (both versions appear in this or that manuscript).
They got their name from Christ [Christus or Chrestus], who was executed by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius. That checked the pernicious superstition for a short time, but it broke out afresh—not only in Judaea, where the plague first arose, but in Rome itself, where all the horrible and shameful things in the world collect and find a home.12
Some have suspected this, like the Testimonium Flavianum, to be a Christian interpolation. It is odd that no Christian writers quote this material for two centuries. It would have been of great interest had it been available, so maybe it wasn't. Maybe it hadn't been written yet. For me, it's a toss-up. But the point is moot, since, as in the case of Josephus, even if the text is authentic and original, it does not constitute proof of a historical Jesus. It merely reflects what Christians were saying in the early second century. The same must be said about the second-century humorist Lucian of Samosata: Both were way too late to know any more about a historical Jesus than we do.
GAIUS OF THE GESTAPO
Gaius Plinius Secundus (Pliny the Younger), ca. 112 CE, reports that Christians in Bithynia, where he was the governor, “sang hymns to Christ as to a god.” This tells us nothing about any historical Jesus, only about Christian worship. To invoke Pliny the Younger as an attestation of Jesus, as O’Reilly and Dugard do, is as futile as it would be to appeal to the bulletin of one's local Presbyterian church. They worship Christ as a god, too. No help there, I'm afraid.
So far this has been my procedure when people were charged before me with being Christians. I have asked the accused themselves if they were Christians; if they said ‘Yes,’ I asked them a second and third time, warning them of the penalty; if they persisted I ordered them to be led off to execution…. But they maintained that their fault or error amounted to nothing more than this: they were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before sunrise and reciting an antiphonal hymn to Christ as to God, and binding themselves with an oath—not to commit any crime, but to abstain from all acts of theft, robbery and adultery, from breaches of faith, from repudiating a trust when called upon to honor it…. Nor has this contagious superstition spread through the cities only, but also through the villages and the countryside. But I think it can be checked and put right. At any rate, the temples, which had been wellnigh abandoned, are beginning to be frequented again; and the customary services, which had been neglected for a long time, are beginning to be resumed; fodder for the sacrificial animals, too, is beginning to find a sale again, for hitherto it was difficult to find anyone to buy it. (Gaius Plinius Secundus, Epistles x.96).13
I hate to say this, but I suspect this one is a Christian interpolation, too. Not as certainly as the bogus Josephus passage, but more nearly certain than the Tacitus text being secondary. Here's why. We are to believe that this letter of Pliny to the Emperor Trajan seeks advice on how severely to persecute the growing numbers of Christians, even though Pliny admits they are really innocent of any wrongdoing. This doesn't make him wonder if they should perhaps cool it with the executions, though. I'm already smelling a rat here. This sounds to me like a Christian trying to create the impression that even Christians’ persecutors believe them to be innocent. It sounds like the whitewashing of Pilate in the gospels. The goal is to make pagans think twice about joining that lynch mob. And I'm not blaming them! We've got the same awful stuff going on all over the world today. I'm for anything that might stop it.
Another thing that sets my alarms off is the impression the text gives that pagans persecute Christians for purely mercenary reasons. Everybody and his brother are converting to that darn religion, and it's ruining the economy! The sacrificial animals and their kibble are going begging because there are so few pagan worshippers anymore! The temples of Zeus and Apollo are in danger of closing! It is exactly the same sort of anachronistic nonsense we read in Acts 19:23–27, where the local idol mongers union calls for Paul to be rubbed out because he is converting so many suckers that the worship of Artemis will go begging. The makers of souvenirs will lose their livelihood. I don't believe it, and that would mean the letter is a fake.
O’Reilly and Dugard refer to Pliny as “the historian Pliny.” He was no historian, and neither are they. Pliny was a Roman governor and an epistolarian, a self-important man of letters. But not a historian. This is no minor goof on the part of the authors of Killing Jesus. It means they had never heard of Pliny and had no idea who he was. They just picked his name out of a list of supposed witnesses to Jesus and assumed he was another historian like Josephus and Tacitus.
A BOY NAMED SUE
It shows how desperate apologists for the faith have become when they start calling the gossipy second-century biographer Suetonius to the stand. All he has to say on the subject (that is, if it is on the subject) is that Claudius “expelled the Jews from Rome, on account of the riots in which they were constantly indulging, at the instigation of Chrestus” (Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars. Claudius 25.4).14 This is a reference to Jesus Christ? You've got to be kidding.
What does it even mean to say that Suetonius makes mention of the Christian Jesus, when he doesn't get the name right, when he locates him on the wrong continent, fifteen years too late, and in a totally alien context? Robert E. van Voorst, like many, thinks there is a garbled reference to Jesus here:
Suetonius's statement indicates how vague and incorrect knowledge of the origins of Christianity could be, both in the first and early second century. Similar sounds and spelling led him, like others, to misread Christus as Chrestus. Continued public unrest over this Christ [as preached by missionaries] had led Claudius to…send the troublemakers packing. From this initial misunderstanding came the idea that this Chrestus was actually present in Rome as an instigator in the 40s.15
But even this attempt to untangle the passage presupposes that it is tangled in the first place. “Hm, he must be talking about Jesus but he got it all wrong. It was Jewish Christian preaching of Jesus that caused the unrest.” But it only seems tangled if you are hell-bent on making it a statement about Jesus. Why not assume it is accurate as it stands, and that Suetonius simply referred to a local troublemaker with the common name “Chrestus”?
THAT'S “THALLUS!”
Julius Africanus says that Thallus, a mid-first-century historian, explained the supernatural darkness at the crucifixion as a mere eclipse. Africanus thinks he was wrong. Apologists gloat over this as a very early pagan testimony to the gospel events. But hold on. Africanus does not actually quote any passage in which Thallus mentions Jesus or the crucifixion. It is just as likely that Africanus just found some reference in Thallus to an eclipse at what Africanus took for the date of Jesus’ death, and he simply assumed Thallus was making reference to the Jesus story. Africanus could be sure the Good Friday darkness was not a natural eclipse because Passover occurs during the full moon, and an eclipse requires a new moon, plus the fact that eclipses don't last three hours! But these facts equally imply that Thallus was not talking about the Good Friday darkness. If he knew the gospel story, how could he have thought the darkness was an eclipse? In any case, Eusebius tells us that Thallus recorded no event after the 167th Olympiad, or 112–109 BCE. Julius Africanus, then, must have been mistaken.
HERE TODAY, PHLEGON TOMORROW
Like O’Reilly and Dugard, the veteran apologist J. N. D. Anderson was glad he could add the second-century writer Phlegon of Tralles to the list of pagan witnesses to Jesus. “Origen…states that Phlegon (a freedman of the Emperor Hadrian who was born about AD 80) mentioned that the founder of Christianity had made certain predictions that had proved true.”16 Alas, this is yet another case of desperate Dumpster-diving. For one thing, if Phlegon did say this, it need mean no more than that he had read Mark 13. For another, no such statement appears in what is left of Phlegon's writings.17 For a third, Phlegon was no historian at all but was rather a “paradoxographer,” a kind of second-century Charles Fort, a collector of weird reports and tabloid anomalies. He did compile prophetic oracles by the Sybil and other ancients, but he was also big on hermaphrodites, on gods and mortals who spontaneously changed their gender and genitals, people with fantastic life spans, and so on. This is bad company for Jesus to be in even if Phlegon did mention him in some writing now lost. Among the freak phenomena Phlegon compiled were several stories of individuals who had died, then came back to life a few days later.
A historical Jesus may well have existed and yet managed not to receive “press coverage” in the ancient world. But apologists obviously feel a bit insecure at the prospect of there being no ancient mentions of Jesus outside of Christian circles. This is why they try to create the impression, as O’Reilly and Dugard do, that Jesus was well known and widely attested to. O’Reilly frequently reads viewer mail whose authors are commenting not on some news or political issues he has discussed on the air but on Killing Jesus. It is sheer promotionalism. And in answer to one “pinhead” who challenged the very existence of Jesus as a historical figure, O’Reilly contemptuously dismissed the viewer's comment, replying that Jesus was documented by Greek and Roman—and even Muslim historians. The fact that O’Reilly thinks Muslim discussions about Jesus would prove anything shows just how clueless he is about history. Islam began over six centuries after Christianity did. A Muslim writer mentioning him is, again, no different from the Encyclopedia Britannica mentioning him.
Here again, it is glaringly obvious that O’Reilly and Dugard are practitioners of precritical “scissors and paste” historiography. They are like a whale, cruising through the ocean, mouth open to glean any plankton in its path. There is no attempt to evaluate materials from the past. Anything is as good as anything else, “all the news that fits, we print.” Bill O’Reilly is quite skilled at distinguishing facts from spin, propaganda, and empty bloviation when it comes to political matters. This is one reason I like him so much. But he appears to be utterly incapable of separating fact from fiction when religion and history are on the table. In this matter he should be taken no more seriously than actor Sean Penn pontificating on foreign policy.